Core Performance: The Revolutionary Workout Program to Transform Your Body and Your Life [Hardcover]

Mark Verstegen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 157954908X | ISBN-13: 978-1579549084 | Publication Date: January 17, 2004 | Edition: 1

You probably look at elite athletes and think they have something you don't. Certainly, they can do things the rest of us can't, but they have the same muscles and require the same food. They have to strike a balance between exercise and recovery, or they'll wear down. They need to get leaner and stronger without compromising their endurance or flexibility. And if they don't train intelligently and cautiously, they'll get hurt. Same as you.

Of course, athletes have hours a day to train, and you're probably lucky if you can squeeze in 60 minutes. So it's no wonder that you focus on one or two types of exercise--aerobics, bodybuilding, Pilates, yoga, kickboxing, or Tae-Bo--and assume you don't have time to work on all the other aspects of fitness.

Core Performance is the first program that delivers strength and muscle mass, endurance and a lean body, balance and flexibility, athletic quickness and power--all in less than an hour a day. How? By giving you a personal coach who has worked with some of the most famous and successful athletes in the world today.

Mark Verstegen, owner of Athletes' Performance in Tempe, Arizona, and Carson, California, has trained the best of the best: Nomar Garciaparra. Mia Hamm. Roberto Alomar. Mary Pierce. When Verstegen trains an athlete, millions of dollars in salary and signing bonuses are at stake. Bottom line: If he didn't deliver, he'd be out of business. And he's busier than ever.
What works for these gifted athletes will work for you. Sure, you can't do as much exercise as they do, but you don't need to. It takes less than an hour a day to build the type of fitness that improves your life in almost every way. You can straighten your posture, eliminate aches and pains, sleep better, and approach everything you do with more vigor and a better attitude.
Sure, you will get bigger muscles, a tighter waist, and more strength and power. But the biggest benefits come from the inside. The intense focus on the muscles of your core--abdominals, lower back, hips, and thighs--will help you stand taller and prevent the back pain from which most people eventually suffer. The detailed nutrition section guarantees that you'll feed your muscles, starve your fat, and get boundless energy when you need it most. And the attention you'll pay to recovery from your workouts will give you a straight path to the results you want.


li0The potential is within you, and the power to unleash that potential is within Core Performance.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This program has transformed me from a skinny college baseball player with little power into one of the best-conditioned players in Major League Baseball." --Nomar Garciaparra, professional baseball player

About the Author

Mark Verstegen directs a 25-person team of performance specialists and nutritionists to train some of the biggest names in sports, including soccer star Mia Hamm; baseball's Nomar Garciaparra, Roberto Alomar, and Vernon Wells; WTA tennis players Meghann Shaughnessy and Mary Pierce; golfers Jim Carter and Billy Mayfair; NFL veteran Trace Armstrong; hockey goalie Nikolai Khabibulin; and NBA forward Rick Fox. He serves as director of performance for the NFL Players Association, is an advisor to Adidas, and serves as a consultant to numerous athletic governing bodies, including the U.S. Tennis Association. Verstegen and his wife, Amy, a former Washington State University soccer player, live in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Pete Williams is a contributing writer to Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal and USA Today Sports Weekly. He has written about fitness and performance for numerous publications and is the author of two books on the sports-memorabilia business: Card Sharks and Sports Memorabilia for Dummies. A graduate of the University of Virginia, he lives in Florida with his wife, Suzy, and son, Luke.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books; 1 edition (January 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157954908X
• ISBN-13: 978-1579549084
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #222,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent workout, but understand the limitations, August 16, 2005

By 

David McCune "self-deprecating and proud of it" (Tacoma, WA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Core Performance: The Revolutionary Workout Program to Transform Your Body and Your Life (Hardcover)

As background, I'm a late thirties guy who has generally been active in fitness and recreational sports, but I've been out of competitive athletics since college. As such, I started with a good-but-not-great level of fitness.

My reasons for starting included boredom with my routine of weightlifting and kickboxing on alternate days, as well as some reading about the merits of core conditioning as a training approach. I enjoyed this program from the beginning. I could detect improvements in flexibility and abdominal strength within a few workouts. Also, the variety was intellectually stimulating. I used the program for about 9 weeks, took a break from it, and returned. Now I am not quite as strict in sticking to the schedules lined out in the book, but rather work them in with other workouts as time and interest allow.

Strengths:
1) The workouts are rigorous and concise. They seldom exceed 45 minutes if you stick to the rules about the amount of rest between sets, but you feel like you have had a good workout.
2) The program works. It helped with overall fitness and sport-specific fitness in soccer and karate. I literally have felt better and fitter than I have in years.
3) The complaint about the science of the book is being answered as research catches up with this training approach. Dynamic stretching, "core" exercises and interval training are showing up in research studies and in professional training rooms. I don't think a reader needs to feel that this is an "out there" approach to fitness.

Weakness:
1) The typos should be embarrassing. Most of the time you can figure out what the author meant, but the website is full of people writing in and asking for clarification.
2) The illustrations leave some doubt as to how the exercises should be performed. I recommend getting the free 1-week trial from the website and checking out the videos of the movements for all of the exercises.
3) The diet recommendations are not too easy to follow if you have a family. It ended up being too much of a hassle to be eating completely at odds with mine, so I generally didn't follow this part.
4) You must be OK with the idea that you are doing exercises that nobody else in the gym is doing. Sometimes folks will ask about it, which can be fun or not, depending on your mood.
5) The circuit exercises are difficult to perform in a crowded gym. They require rotating rapidly between two or more pieces of equipment, and it's hard to do this without inconveniencing someone.
6) Finally, a word about the pay website - it sure looks like a beta version to me. I'd recommend waiting for version 2.0 before considering joining.

So if you are reasonably fit and looking for a challenge, and you don't mind some minor irritations, I think it is a great program.

165 of 174 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 5 / 5 for the program but only 3 or 4 for presentation, June 18, 2004

By 

Simon Pearce (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Core Performance: The Revolutionary Workout Program to Transform Your Body and Your Life (Hardcover)

Having read other reviews and having followed the 12 week program for 9 weeks so far (and counting), I can make the following comments:

The positives...

1. The program itself is very effective - it really works the whole body and not just the "obvious" muscles favored by traditional strength training. There are some great exercises in here. If you are serious about conditioning your body, buy this book - no question

2. Some people will not be able to follow the entire program, but I do believe that, even if you don't have the time or willpower to work out six days a week, the routines can still be useful to you in a three or four day a week version.

3. OK, it does take time to work it all out...this is not a simple program and not for a novice to working out. If you are novice, this book will freak you out and probably doom you to failure. Newbies should start with something more simple, if you successfully follow a simpler program for 6-12 months, come back to this book at that time. For the more experienced among you: take the time to work out what the program demands of you, you will be rewarded for your efforts!!

So, having endorsed the overall effectiveness of the book, here's where I think Mark could improve before releasing another book.

1. The science is a little flimsy: Other reviewers have raised legitimate concerns...people like me who are prepared to spend 6 days a week working out want to understand the theory behind it all a bit better. I really hoped for a better understanding of how these exercises impact my musculo-skeletal system. Mark should co-write another version (or another book) with an experienced Chiropractor in order to solve that part of it.

2. Some of the instructions are not specific enough: there are exercises on the worksheets that are not explained properly earlier on in the book (e.g. the bridging adduction). Also, it is not always clear how long to hold certain stretches or movements for maximum effect. Timing is only made really clear in the strength and elasticity modules. There is no discussion about how you should think about increasing or reducing weight as you change the number of repetitions.

All in all, an excellent effort, but I am left wondering if I am doing some of this "the right way" and also wondering about the science that would explain why the program is effective, which might help me to better customize the plan to my unique needs after I "finish" the 12th week. Despite my criticisms, I would add that this is the best book I have seen on this topic.

57 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Liked the book, love the CD, December 3, 2005

By 

David M. Ellis "David Ellis" (San Diego) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Core Performance: The Revolutionary Workout Program to Transform Your Body & Your Life (Paperback)

The only reason I didnt give the book 5 stars is that the CD is much more effective. If you are already sold on core training and looking for a comprehensive exercise plan, just buy the CD. The extra money the CD costs will save you many hours trying to understand. Getting all the exercises right from a few photos is difficult. And the CD has pdf files for the exercise logs, just print and your exercise logs are ready. A big time saver because there are about 50 exercises in each phase of 3 phases. Buying the CD will save you time and ensure more effective exercising.

The CD videos give you a clear visualization of the movements and the timing needed to perform correctly. They are short clips, with both front and side views. From using the book some two months I was confident that I was close to doing most things right. I wasn't. Even my trainer guessed wrong on the one exercise I asked him about. It was a pylometric exercise, and figuring pylos out from a few photos is not going to happen - unless you are a Michelangelo of physical training. Even the exercises that were similar to what my trainer had shown me were not completely like my assumptions. For example, exercises that I assumed were isometric, were not. Many of the exercises were more powerful and graceful than I had imagined.

The plan depends on 7 different kinds of exercise. They are:

1. Movement Prep 2. Prehab 3. Phsyioball 4. Elasticity 5. Strength 6. Energy Systems Development, and 7. Regeneration.

One reviewer complained about the nomenclature of the exercises. The renaming was necessary so that the objective of the exercises is clear. For example, "movement Prep" is stretching, but it is stretching with the purpose of developing the flexibility to move. "Prehab" is exercises to strengthen shoulders, hips, and spine to make them injury resistant and its a great concept - do your "prehab" exercises and avoid doing ""rehab" exercises.. "Elasticity" is not called "pylometrics" because "Elasticity" emphasizes the objective of elastic muscle to achieve speed and strength. And "Energy Systems Development" is a plan to develop capabilities to challenge your lactate threshold(3 mins) of high intensity), your alactate threshold, 12 seconds of high intensity, and your aerobic threshold, intensity beyond three minutes. Renaming was necessary to make the theme of this exercise program clear.